Drwaddy Posted January 2, 2012 Share Posted January 2, 2012 Hey everyone, I decided on assassin because I love stealth and picking my battles, attacking from the shadows, and in general manipulating the fight. However, since I created the toon over the passed 38 levels I've developed quite a few questions I can't seem to answer on my own or find any helpful information on the forums. it seems to be that the assassin in swtor is very different from what I have become familiar with in other titles. The class itself is very confusing in terms of what abilities I should be using and when. That isn't even including " talents " or whatever they're called. I decided on Deception spec because it highlighted the burst damage and the melee aspect of the class which I believed to fit my initial idea of the class the best. However, I'm having a very difficult time developing a priority list or even choosing talents based on my abilities. First of all, every skill we have that does damage aside from Saber Strike requires some amount of force of which we only at most have 110. All of these abilties do about the same amount of damage and provide different buffs and have different uses. Obviously Discharge and Shock are great for kiting or chasing. Lacerate is great in big group fights, and Saber Strike is only good when we run out of force completely. However, we have Maul and Assassinate which are twice to three times as damaging as these other abilities. They require conditions to be usable, which is their major draw back. That being said though, this is where I run into my issue. Why would I chose to use any other abilities but Maul, Assassinate and Saber Strike? If I am attacking a squishy target, like a merc or sorc. Then chances are they are focused on healing or doing damage to another target already and are either going to ignore me or try to run helplessly from me. This is what I should consistently be doing to begin with, since I am not going to be sturdy enough to absorb damage and fight for objectives or defend my support I need to be focusing on the enemy support. So, what is the point of using Discharge or Shock or Thrash / Voltaic Slash if I can maul every time I have 50 force and I can assassinate them when they drop below 30%? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keengamer Posted January 2, 2012 Share Posted January 2, 2012 (edited) So, what is the point of using Discharge or Shock or Thrash / Voltaic Slash if I can maul every time I have 50 force and I can assassinate them when they drop below 30%? Mystery solved. Also The class itself is very confusing in terms of what abilities I should be using and when. If you take a look at your buff bar the abilities you should be using show up there while you hit people Edited January 2, 2012 by Keengamer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kainsec Posted January 2, 2012 Share Posted January 2, 2012 Maul is a crap ability. Honestly even with duplicity it's not that great, hits weaker than shock or discharge is only useful once every 10 seconds or so. Shock is the absolute best burst damage ability on Sins if you build around that ability. Discharge the next hardest, followed by assassinate/maul. The reason you don't use just maul ss and assassinate is bc it's a bad rotation. To little damage for force used making it horribly inefficient. Add lacerate to the list of useless abilities. 40 force for that awful damage is a waste of resources on a class that burns through them fast. Use force slow to deal with kiting. Use mass mind control on anyone who is attacking but not attacking you. Also merc are not squishy targets they are probably the toughest non tank to attack. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faerfall Posted January 2, 2012 Share Posted January 2, 2012 Maul is a crap ability. It's damage/force is actually pretty good when it's costing only 25. Also at lower levels (i.e. pre-double shock) it hits harder; the only reason Shock gets better is because so so many talents crutch it up. Maul is certainly a lot stronger than any of your other spammable attacks, and is likely your hardest hitting nuke pre-40 (ignoring assassinate) at the very least. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daystarr Posted January 2, 2012 Share Posted January 2, 2012 Maul is a crap ability. Honestly even with duplicity it's not that great, hits weaker than shock or discharge is only useful once every 10 seconds or so. Shock is the absolute best burst damage ability on Sins if you build around that ability. Discharge the next hardest, followed by assassinate/maul. The reason you don't use just maul ss and assassinate is bc it's a bad rotation. To little damage for force used making it horribly inefficient. Add lacerate to the list of useless abilities. 40 force for that awful damage is a waste of resources on a class that burns through them fast. Use force slow to deal with kiting. Use mass mind control on anyone who is attacking but not attacking you. Also merc are not squishy targets they are probably the toughest non tank to attack. Lolwut? Are you serious? My maul hits much harder than my Shock does, crits up to 2k while Shock only crits like 1.7k. Assassinate is just extra burst when the mobs are sub 30% and should be used on cd and take priority over other abilities. Your priority should be: Assasinate, Discharge, Thrash/Lacerate x2, Shock, Maul with duplicity up, saber strike when out of force. Although the priority shows Maul 2nd last, it is still a very hard hitting ability that should be used whenever Duplicity is up due to the unique nature of this proc. Lacerate isnt useless either, talented its 30 force for decent damage. COming out of stealth and spamming Lacerate, and then using Blackout once your force regen buff has dropped easily dishes out 10-15k damage PER MOB once all buffs have expired. While levelling, this is very useful especially with khem tanking. If for pvp, then the same priority should still be used regardless. Circumstances can change ofc when sometimes you cant maul or whatever, but assasinate is still very hard hitting in a pvp enviroment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faerfall Posted January 2, 2012 Share Posted January 2, 2012 My maul hits much harder than my Shock does, crits up to 2k while Shock only crits like 1.7k. Voltaic Slash = +30% shock damage, then there's the double shock ability. Atm my Shock does ~2.2k in PvP, my Maul does ~3.5k; both on a crit. With +30% damage from Voltaic Slash that's 2620, with double shock talent that's 3930 or so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cinnagar Posted January 2, 2012 Share Posted January 2, 2012 Hey everyone, I decided on assassin because I love stealth and picking my battles, attacking from the shadows, and in general manipulating the fight. However, since I created the toon over the passed 38 levels I've developed quite a few questions I can't seem to answer on my own or find any helpful information on the forums. it seems to be that the assassin in swtor is very different from what I have become familiar with in other titles. The class itself is very confusing in terms of what abilities I should be using and when. That isn't even including " talents " or whatever they're called. I decided on Deception spec because it highlighted the burst damage and the melee aspect of the class which I believed to fit my initial idea of the class the best. However, I'm having a very difficult time developing a priority list or even choosing talents based on my abilities. First of all, every skill we have that does damage aside from Saber Strike requires some amount of force of which we only at most have 110. All of these abilties do about the same amount of damage and provide different buffs and have different uses. Obviously Discharge and Shock are great for kiting or chasing. Lacerate is great in big group fights, and Saber Strike is only good when we run out of force completely. However, we have Maul and Assassinate which are twice to three times as damaging as these other abilities. They require conditions to be usable, which is their major draw back. That being said though, this is where I run into my issue. Why would I chose to use any other abilities but Maul, Assassinate and Saber Strike? If I am attacking a squishy target, like a merc or sorc. Then chances are they are focused on healing or doing damage to another target already and are either going to ignore me or try to run helplessly from me. This is what I should consistently be doing to begin with, since I am not going to be sturdy enough to absorb damage and fight for objectives or defend my support I need to be focusing on the enemy support. So, what is the point of using Discharge or Shock or Thrash / Voltaic Slash if I can maul every time I have 50 force and I can assassinate them when they drop below 30%? You say you've played other games: the Deception Sin should feel like a mutilate rogue in WoW, sans combo points. You have discharge and shock to fill the role of envenom, that is dealing damage that bypasses armor, and you have melee that will hit things without a lot of armor very hard. The talent Induction not only buffs Maul but also creates a strong synergy between Thrash/VS and Shock. The talent Static Charges provides a reason to be using Thrash/VS against any target, especially high armor targets, because of the chance of proccing Surging Charge and building another stack to buff your next Discharge. Admittedly, this feels like RNG building of combo points in order to use Envenom. Still, it's useful and gives us a way to fry them inside their heavy armor. To me, it feels very similar: know how to drop the squishy targets and know when you can win, toe to toe, with a beefy target. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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